Exam Week Poetry

Exams this week, so I thought I'd laid down some poetry that I wrote down last week while looking out the window. Seems like I keep writing about trees these days.
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Seasonal Party (2008)

The largest cherry blossom on my block
Has a poor sense of timing.

It garnishes and accessorizes
Its aged and wrinkly branches
With feminine pink,
A million soft sequins.

But as the other trees arrive
In their best dress and outifts.
The largest tree's modesty
Would already be scattered and spread
On my lawn and on the street,
The blunder of unfashionable earliness.


Street Lamp (2008)

I saw the immediate aftermath.
Rows of uprooted victims.
Months later,
A forest of dull green metal
Conceals the history of the fallen.

Trees at a Parking Lot

Standing evenly spaced
in line, at attention.
Sporting gnarled crew cuts,
unruliness untolerated
and boundaries maintained.

The trees were deprived of soul,
strength,
and self-confidence.

Sitting high atop one,
a collection of carefully placed branches,
Stubborn to the shouting wind.

Signs of life that would be had
if the birds were back
to spread like lice
from tree to tree
and crew cut to crew cut.

Some Poems

First Meeting (2001)

The tangle of their lifeline
Rarely entwine with ours.
I have only seen them twice
In all my years in the mountains.

His head was crowned
With an antique finished oak coat hanger.
His heir, of unknown gender
Was grazing the grass that hid in the snow.

I watched them
Through the rear window, listening to music
As they stood their ground.
Hearing only the crunching
Of hooves and the hum of the motor.

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I'm working on a second poem, but I'm not satisfied with it enough to post it just yet.